If you've never seen a meteor shower, this month's Perseids are a perfect introduction.

Plan a summer getaway on Thursday night, August 12.You'll begin to see meteors by about 11 p.m. But the rates increase closer to dawn.

The Perseid meteor shower is named after the constellation Perseus. And the meteors appear to originate near this constellation in the northeast sky.

This year's meteor shower happens on a moonless night, so you'll be able to see more of the fast, bright meteors.

Meteor showers are the debris of a passing comet, or sometimes the debris from a fragmented asteroid. Comets originally formed in the cold outer solar system, while most of rocky asteroids formed in the warmer inner solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. When a comet nears the sun, its icy surface heats up. This causes clouds of gas, dirt and dust to be released, forming a tail of debris that can stretch for millions of miles. As Earth passes near this dusty tail, some of the particles hit our atmosphere. They burn up and we see the result as meteors.